Neo900 Hacker Phone Reaches Minimum Number of Pre-Orders For Production 109
First time accepted submitter wick3t writes "The Neo900 fundraising campaign has already achieved the milestone of 200 pre-orders which means that mass production is now feasible. This follows a successful first prototype that was showcased at the OpenPhoenux-Hard-Software-Workshop 2013. Their next target is 1000 pre-orders as they aspire to reduce the production costs of each device."
For those not familiar, the Neo 900 is an offshoot of the OpenMoko GTA04 designed for use in the popular Nokia N900 case (and, yes, they're fixing the weak usb port).
Nooooo (Score:1)
but there can't be another smartphone, it's economically impossible!
I called it (Score:2)
I remember a few years ago I said (on Slashdot) that soon the only open computers would be expensive niche products from tiny companies...it's now true for mobile devices. How long until the rest of computing follows?
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They were common until the iPhone came out. PalmOS was a closed-source OS but you were free to run anything you liked on their range of devices. Same with Windows Mobile and Windows CE. The only "walled garden" mobile OS that existed before iOS was Symbian.
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Riiight. Except that they are using the same Chinese labor to make this phone as everyone else uses?
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It might be true to some components sourced externally, but Neo900 itself is going to be manufactured in Bavaria (Germany), just like GTA04 was.
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Sure, those are the components and those are manufactured wherever Texas Instruments, Panasonic and other vendors manufacture them. The Neo900 itself will however be assembled in Germany, as that's the best the project can do with its resources (similarly to what Raspberry Pi did with assembling in UK).
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In the EU look to Fairphone for a device without the slave labor, rampant pollution and closed systems. They are delivering this month(!) and on a scale of >32,000 units for their first run (original goal was 25k). Price is 325 euros.
Hopefully after an initial success, they will want to make one for the US market. Even so, I'd consider using one of the EU models in the US as a small tablet.
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Um, I think its you who are mistaken by lumping Android (choice of OS and app sources) in with iOS (Apple-only source).
FairPhone are making sure the hardware will work with FOSS versions of Android and they are going as far as to test with other OS's like Firefox; the phone is designed to have the users' choice of OS installed onto it. That is a huge difference from the typical Android vendor.
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It might be different from the typical Android vendor but the Neo900 is not aiming to be an Android replacement.
Have you ever tried running normal Linux tasks on Android such as compiling a C program, "ssh -X", running strace, etc.? Ever tried running X11 or Wayland instead of SurfaceFlinger? I think you'll find that Android's environment is not very well suited for these kind of tasks. Google's chose to use Bionic libc making Android makes it largely incompatible with the desktop and server Linux we kno
Re:Yay (Score:5, Interesting)
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Sort of like the Linux on my desktop. Linux is not a GUI, it is a kernel. The last time I "saw Linux" was a kernel panic about a year ago.
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Sort of like the Linux on my desktop. Linux is not a GUI, it is a kernel. The last time I "saw Linux" was a kernel panic about a year ago.
So you are a Stallman-ite denier that "Linux" can refer anything beyond the kernel. Fine.
Android is not simply a GUI, it is a complete OS environment. Android is the target platform, not Linux. With the GUIs you refer to the target platform is still Linux. Read "Linux" as "GNU/Linux" if you must.
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I think it just depends on how much effort you want to put into misusing it. Penguins are birds that swim you know. Its all about adaptability and willpower.
Ubuntu Edge (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ubuntu Edge (Score:5, Informative)
Why does this phone get produced but the Ubuntu Edge doesn't?
Because one (Ubuntu EDGE) is a vaporware consisting of couple PhotoShop images and the other (Neo900) is a in-detail specified open hardware project based on the proven N900 lineage, built by community with long years of building open hardware smartphones (Neo FreeRunner, GTA04) ?
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Because they have more than just a couple of 3d renders and an empty shell?
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That, and the Scrubs want >30 million $ of your money
Price. (Score:5, Informative)
Because Ubuntu Edge cost four times as much? $625 was a lot to spend on a product that hadn't even been built, especially from a company that has no previous record when it comes to hardware.
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There's no final price listed on the web page. It just says that they're counting every 100 Euro as an individual phone. Contributors get a full rebate when the phones are released, plus 2% for every month from the time they contributed to the release, as a reward for early donations. It could very well end up costing more than the Ubuntu phone.
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Because the Ubuntu Edge needed $32M to get funded, and this needed 25 000 €.
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someone gives a shit about it and the aim was _realistic_ and someone _actually_ went ahead and designed the board.
whereas ubuntu edge didn't get manufactured because they didn't manage to beg enough money to pay other people to design it for them. they had no design and they basically just took the highest specs they could come up with for a phone to be sold next year.
still, wouldn't buy, but a+ for effort.
How exciting! (Score:4, Informative)
I've been following this very, very, closely. I adore my N900...I just wish it was a little closer to my beloved Debian than it is...not to mention with the closed source UI code replaced with open code. I was tempted to do some of that work myself (and/or join some of the people doing similar things), but it was hard to justify the time cost on what is essentially a dead piece of hardware.
...with the potential for new devices however....things become a lot more interesting.
Personally, I never really bought into the Meego changes...I felt too much of Maemo's "Debian" roots were lost thanks to the merge with the more Redhat-based Moblin, and I'd be much more interested in going back the other way, though the developers working on the continuation of Meego (Nemo et al) have done amazing work, cumulating in Jolla's new phone running Sailfish. I concluded (as, it seems, have many others) the best approach for my aims was to take the working Maemo 5 system and slowly rewrite the closed components one by one whilst simultaneously separately rebuilding the foundations on top of a more standard Debian base, essentially so you can have operational testing of things like communications features much quickly. There's been a lot of good work by the Maemo community to this end.
All in all, very exciting. I'm hoping to order a couple of boards to revitalise a damaged spare N900 I have here, and if it works out well, my main one too :)
Great and wonderful... (Score:2)
but will it work with my family's ATT wireless plan?
Re:Great and wonderful... (Score:5, Informative)
According to their FAQ [neo900.org], the modem will support the UMTS frequencies used by both AT&T and T-Mobile in the US.
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the modem will support the UMTS frequencies used by both AT&T and T-Mobile in the US.
That's not actually what I asked.
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but will it work with my family's ATT wireless plan?
Short version: yes. AT&T's GSM network does not automatically boot off devices that it doesnt recognize, although you will get no customer support for a device that hasn't gone through their extensive network certification process.
So your family plan will work if you swap your current SIMs out of your devices and into this phone. If you go into an AT&T store and say "what plans can I get with my Neo900?" they will stare at you blankly and try to sell you an iPhone... not out of malice but because th
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Many thanks. That's exactly what I needed to know.
Better, but still flooded marketplace. (Score:2)
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Re: Better, but still flooded marketplace. (Score:2)
I have an N810, which doesn't see much use but I'm looking at replacing my remotes with it.
Anyway, how does the keyboard compare?
Re:Better, but still flooded marketplace. (Score:4, Insightful)
resistive touchscreen Luddites. (Score:4, Interesting)
Can't buy this for the same reason why I didn't buy the n900, the terrible resistive touchscreen. It was a terrible choice, as all the android and iOS devices of note were capacitive at the time.
Re:resistive touchscreen Luddites. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you actually used the N900 touchscreen? I wouldn't replace it with any capacitive crap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66RBfrBgL2E [youtube.com]
Re: resistive touchscreen Luddites. (Score:2)
Yes I have, its resistive as all get out. Do not want.
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Its obvious from its design choice of reusing the n900 shell that swaping out the resistive screen for capacitive would not be feasible. It was just a terrible design choice by nokia. If the n900 was as modern as the n9, Nokia would still be making cell phones and windows phone would be on life support. I find this whole exercise perverse, like celebrating the sinking of the titanic.
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The primary reason why it's resistive is that they are reusing the screen from the N900.
I wouldn't refer to the N9's screen as a rectification. A resistive screen is a good choice for an Internet Tablet [wikipedia.org] and a capacitive screen is a good choice for a smart phone.
IMHO, a resistive screen plus stylus is the better choice to replace a desktop mouse in a mobile device that aims to be a fully functional computer.
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This is a phone for hackers - for people, who can come up with more than "pretty much everything you'd sensibly want to do on a 4" mobile phone".
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This neo 900 is, the n900 wasn't. It was for mainstream users. And people calling themselves hackers shouldn't require hardware to do the job that open source software can more easily do. Its like ricers paying auto shops to put a triple decker spoiler on their car because the're "car guys" who "go fast" in their 93 Honda civics.
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Yeah. Exactly. The best defence of the screen is the one above, it makes using a desktop ui on a 4 inch screen possible. That is its top selling point. Meanwhile, it stinks for any ui designed for a 4 inch screen.
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Keep in mind I'm objecting to Noikia's decision more than these enthusiasts. Bad Nokia!
Re:resistive touchscreen Luddites. (Score:5, Informative)
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I used the N900 for 6 months, hated it - and the screen was one of the main reasons for my hate. The FAQ can preach the good word all it wants (of course its going to back the decision) but it doesn't change my mind about how terrible the N900 was.
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some people love candy, while others love bacon. I think N900 resistive ts is the best r-ts I've ever seen and used. And I have some other resistive ts devices here to compare. It would be more honest if you'd state that you simply don't like r-ts which is quite understandable when you're used to c-ts. To claim that N900 was particularly bad is absurd. I prefer it every day over all the c-ts devices as well as all other r-ts devices (except maybe N810) I have here.
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Now an n900, overclocked and with mypaint installed, awesome drawing tablet, no other screen like it.
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I used a friend's N900 just last night - I thought the screen was quite OK - rather responsive to my touch.
200+ == Mass Production? Really????? (Score:2)
they might have a shot with 20k, but 200 is ridiculous.... it's closer to the sample size that one would use for for pre-production testing.
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It's directed at niche target. I'm actually positively surprised that it reached 200 this fast.
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There are many of us so these numbers are to be expected.
Whoops. That should read "There aren't many of us so these numbers are to be expected."
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It's mass production when the resources required for development and testing are much smaller than the sales.
For instance, reliability testing for something as complicated as a cell phone should require tens or even hundreds of units. Electrical testing, certifications, developer's units, demos, bench units, betas, it all adds up, and I'd be very surprised if the minimum number isn't in the hundreds. You can always scrimp on testing to save on development cost, but that tends to be a result in (severe) qu
Nice! (Score:2)
I liked the N900, but.... (Score:2, Interesting)
the world moved on. When the N900 came out, it was one of the best phones available, both in package and in software. But it has been over four years now. The world has moved on. It has moved on to slimmer phones, larger screens, not to mention better touch screens (yes, I have used the N900, and the screen is way worse than the touch screen of my Galaxy Nexus). I type faster with Swype than I ever did with the QWERTY-keyboard, the screen is better, it fits better in my pocket, it is lighter, etc.
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This is a place to discuss things which involves both sides of a subject. It's not merely a circle jerk.
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the world moved on. When the N900 came out, it was one of the best phones available, both in package and in software. But it has been over four years now. The world has moved on. It has moved on to slimmer phones, larger screens,
I think the N900 is a much nicer form factor to carry around, compared to the slabs that cannot decide whether they want to be tablets or phones.
not to mention better touch screens (yes, I have used the N900, and the screen is way worse than the touch screen of my Galaxy Nexus). I type faster with Swype than I ever did with the QWERTY-keyboard, the screen is better, it fits better in my pocket, it is lighter, etc.
I agree the screen is not very good by current standards, but I won't give up a real keyboard. For example, as a theatre sound guy, I need to be able to hold my finger on a key for pressing on time. I can't imagine how to do this with a "touch"screen. While I generally use a laptop for this, I occasionally use the N900 as a remote (ssh over wlan). Of course, the ke
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All of my phones have had very erratic latency, even for wifi over LAN. Have yours been consistent enough for this to provide the split-second timing you need?
My N4 is about 3 unobstructed meters from the wifi access point. With 10 samples of each, a laptop at the same distance gets pings to t
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All of my phones have had very erratic latency, even for wifi over LAN. Have yours been consistent enough for this to provide the split-second timing you need?
It's not really about such precise timing, though I agree that WLAN latency can really suck sometimes. It's more about holding the finger in position while looking somewhere else all the time, and then being sure the keypress was registered. Hovering over a screen does not feel very secure when you're in a tight spot. Besides, capacitive screens often register very close hovering as pressing, especially when your hands are sweating.
Obviously, I try to use a real laptop keyboard whenever possible, but I h